


a girl who loved a wolf

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Lost Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 14:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9552989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: But Sansa has lost her faith in the inherent goodness of people, just as she's lost her faith in love.Margaery.Sweet and kind, clever and bold, those eyes so dark they were almost black, now shuttered forever. Her autumnal hair down to her middle-back, the loose curls that Sansa liked to twine her fingers in. She had been so real, a brief shimmer of light in an all-encompassing dark.But all lights go out eventually.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for user **Nemo**. It follows **show-canon** , as per the user's request. 
> 
> Note: I haven't seen the show for a few seasons now. Thank you to **heart_nouveau** for advice and general encouragement.

 

 

  

So many kinds of griefs, Sansa thinks, though she hadn't known before. So many kinds of griefs in this world, as many griefs as there are people, and she just hadn't understood it until now. _You never prepared me,_ she thinks to her two dead, murdered parents. _You never prepared me for how cruel the world could be._

It is winter when the rider comes to Winterfell. Sansa is standing at the window, watching him draw slowly closer through the haze, and though she doesn't know what he has come to say, something pools dark and cold in her stomach like dread. She slowly descends the stairs and walks outside into the bitter snow, the frigid chill, in nothing but her gown, and approaches him.

And then she absolutely falls. Falls to her knees, one hand on the ground and the other on her breast, shaking her head over and over and over, tears rising unbidden to her eyes. _No_. Any emotion, if sincere, is involuntary--and the crying comes to her in great body-wrenching sobs, tearing her apart from her very inside. _This isn't how it's supposed to be,_ she thinks, a ceaseless repetition of recognition and remorse. _This isn't how it's supposed to be. You were supposed to come back here; you were supposed to put back on your crown and I was supposed to take back your hand. That's how it was supposed to be._

But she doesn't have that. She just has this castle, and the grief of a love that has left her even emptier than she ever was before.

She kneels there, paler than the snow around them, making sounds she's only ever heard from dying animals. And yet she can't stop. 

 _Margaery,_ she thinks, again and again, _what did you tell me? That love isn't suffering?_

_Then why does it feel like that's all it ever is?_

 

 

*

 

 

There is no way to fill the space of a person who will never return. Their shape remains, empty, a hole in the heart of your life; and oh, Sansa can remember every inch of her, every soft tender spot and unfinished curve, the sweetness of her obsidian-deer eyes. She remembers being folded in her arms at night, the way their breathing matched, just like their hearts.

But Sansa has lost her faith in the inherent goodness of people, just as she's lost her faith in love. _Margaery._ Sweet and kind, clever and bold, those eyes so dark they were almost black, now shuttered forever. Her autumnal hair down to her middle-back, the loose curls that Sansa liked to twine her fingers in. She had been so real, a brief shimmer of light in an all-encompassing dark.

But all lights go out eventually.

 

 

*

 

 

Sansa wonders if Margaery knew how often she thought of her. How Sansa thought of the way her eyes looked when Sansa touched her, dazed and dreamy and half-gone, or the way they'd tilted up when she laughed, like a smile only Sansa could see. 

Now Sansa stands in the molten afternoon light and looks at the few flowers peeking out through the snow. She's never known what their true name is, but ever since Margaery she's ever only called them one thing: winter roses.

Beauty is unbearable, far more than ugliness, and this is another lesson that Sansa has learned far too late. She stands in the high snows looking at the blooms, their beautiful silver-white blossoms and black eyes, and doesn't move. She doesn't cry, either, but this is only because she can't. The worst kind of grief is accompanied not by tears but by silence. Within her it builds and builds, an imposssible pressure, unable to be relieved by the grace of sobs. She holds it all inside. And how is that possible? She wonders. How can someone so small hold all of that inside? Her bones show; her clavicles are knife-sharp, her wrists as small as they were when she was a child. But these were the after-effects of love, she acknowledges. This was collateral. This was her own undoing.

Her own undoing, for loving so much and so hard.

Sansa sees her in everything. She sees the radiance of her skin in the snow; the warmth of her hands in the startling winds; the sweetness of her kiss in the unlikely warmth. Everywhere, there is Margaery. But nowhere as much as there is within the roses.

Some days she gathers armfuls of them, brings them to her rooms and settles them into a vase of glass. Then she just sits and looks. Jon comes to worry for her; the beautiful auburn-haired girl, sitting mourning a vase of roses. But he says nothing, for he has enough griefs already.

Perhaps, Sansa thinks, he understands.

Perhaps he had a Margaery, too.

But neither of them speak of it; for speaking of it would make it real. Speaking of it would make it just too painful to bear.

 

 

*

 

 

And she knows, at once, through all the fighting and all the blood, that she will never love again.

There was only this once: an autumn-haired girl with an astonishing smile,

and deer-bright eyes that made her forget all else.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

When spring comes, the blossoms fade away: a profound yet indistinct reminder that this world goes on, even when the people within it don't.

And Sansa sits within her room, staring at the last lonely vase of them, silver-tipped and glorious, more than just flowers just as Margaery was more than just a lover. She was the clasp of winter within King's Landing; she was the biting autumn breeze; she was all that Sansa wanted and couldn't have. She was precious: something bright and sweet and kind, something to keep close, something to hide away.

And now she's dead, and Sansa thinks that a part of her died with Margaery, though she doesn't know why. She doesn't know why she hasn't felt this way before; she doesn't know why a dead girl could give her all the sorrow of a skipped heartbeat; she doesn't know why, when she thinks of Margaery, something slows in her chest, too. 

All she knows is that she's sorry, and that if she could, if she would, she'd go back and save them both.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 


End file.
